Ex-Sen. Gary Hart has written a thriller that explores the themes of his failed presidential campaign.

The novel, “I, Che Guevara,” set in Cuba and written under the pseudonym John Blackhorn, features an American TV network whose motto could be: “All scandal, all the time.”

Driven by ratings and cynicism, it covers only politics. But its target audience’s “idea of serious politics was Monica Lewinsky’s life story,” writes the former Colorado senator, whose tryst with Donna Rice ended his 1988 presidential effort.

In “Che,” Cuban leader Fidel Castro retires and offers to hold elections if the United States will end its embargo.

An old man who seems to be Castro’s old ally, Ernesto “Che” Guevara, reported killed in 1967, returns to lead a grass-roots revolt, which is opposed by both communists and capitalists.

The 63-year-old Hart, who doesn’t like to talk about his downfall, has Guevara talk about a new form of assassination.

“If someone – even a political enemy – says that one of your national leaders may have had a romance with some lady to whom he was not married, it is enough. He is finished,” Guevara says. “You call it ‘a scandal.’ He is assassinated. You say he has a flawed character.”

Guevara asks: “Who gave you the right to judge another man’s character? The person who gives you the camera and the microphone? The one who makes money from your ‘news.’ And who is he? What about his character?”

Hart, who is also the author of “Sins of the Father,” another thriller set in Cuba, denies he wrote his latest book to get revenge on the media.

“Not at all. I’d say some of my best friends are journalists, if it wasn’t such a cliché. I have great respect for traditional journalism,” he says.

Hart, who has had dinner with Castro three times in the past three years, says he used the pseudonym because he didn’t want his Cuban hosts thinking “I was using them just to write novels.”

Hart, who is now an international lawyer, has written two other novels: one under his own name, and one with Defense Secretary William Cohen, when both men were senators.